Timothy McVeigh plotted the Oklahoma City bombing "to cause a general uprising in America" and felt justified in killing innocent people because they are part of an "evil empire," his former Army buddy testified Monday.
Michael Fortier, who has pleaded guilty to knowing about the plot, said McVeigh told him that he and co-defendant Terry Nichols chose the federal building because that is where the "orders were issued" in the government's siege at Waco, Texas."He told me they wanted to bomb the building on the anniversary of Waco," Fortier said. "I understood it to be the day the fire had engulfed the compound - April 19th."
On the second anniversary of the Waco raid, a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, killing 168 people in the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil.
Fortier testified that McVeigh wanted to "to cause a general uprising in America, hopefully that would knock some people off the fence and cause them to take action."
He said McVeigh considered all of the federal employees like "storm troopers" in the movie Star Wars.
"They may be individually innocent but because they were part of the evil empire, they were guilty by association," Fortier said.
Fortier said McVeigh sent him a letter in the months before the blast, saying he and Nichols "had decided to take some positive, offensive action. . . . He told me that him and Terry were thinking about blowing up a building."
He said McVeigh asked him to come with him one night, and they followed Nichols to storage sheds near Fortier's trailer in Kingman, Ariz.
"We got into a storage locker . . . and Tim showed me some explosives that were inside it," Fortier said, adding he saw a warning symbol for explosives.